Tag Archives: contemporary painting

I’m currently reading Mindfulness: 25 Ways To Live In The Moment Through Art by Christophe Andre. Hearing much about mindfulness and the buzz that surrounds it, I picked up this book in Birmingham Airport… it seemed perfect. Mindfulness AND Art?!

I had no expectations of this book, but it is truly beautifully crafted. Andre uses paintings both modern and of the masters to illustrate his concepts and teachings. He doesn’t overstate the benefits of mindfulness (which I believe is a trap that many authors have fallen into) instead he demonstrates that Mindfulness is not a way out of life’s problems – but a way of being present in a way which fosters self/other compassion, and a clear-eyed awareness of the miracle of being in the moment, existing.

Even reading it makes you become more mindful… absorbing the images and words, looking at details of paintings over and over again – it creates some kind of tangible awareness which is all too hard to find in this fast-living world.

I have not only come to love the paintings more, but understand them in a different and calm dimension.

I started to think about my own practice and when I have the chance to be mindful when I create. This has led to a series of map pieces. I don’t think about the colours or the lines or the composition really. I simply paint and be.

Observation of the Welsh Landscape begins to take form into a Painting that balances somewhere between the realms of figuration and abstraction.

I start off with small thumbnail sketches through direct observation and then work them into a composition. What happens from there is a response process. I begin to layer paint and just respond to the colours, marks and forms that have went before. The way I paint relies heavily on intuition, and there are times that I have to just trust in my process. This then creates a kind of constructed experimental landscape, that’s organic and natural. I try to keep things gestural and expressive, to convey and essence of the landscape as well as translate the transient, fleeting nature of creation.

Untitled ll, acrylic on canvas, 6ft x 3.2ft, £210

close-up detail

close-up detail

(see Paintings section for more info as well as other works)

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.” -Vincent Van Gogh